His Fantasy Land

The oxygen machine hums all day. It doesn’t stop. The morphine pump beeps at intervals I’ve memorized by now. These are the sounds that fill Dad’s house — not his whistling, not the clatter of tools, not the screen door banging behind him as he heads out to the yard. Just the hum and the beep, steady as a pulse that isn’t quite his own.

He’s getting worse each day. I can see it in the math of him — less weight, less voice, less time awake. He doesn’t drink anything now. He takes swabs of water on a sponge stick and sometimes vomits even from that. He talks about how he’d love a large glass of water, how he’d drink the whole thing down in one go. He says it the way a kid talks about Christmas. Then he dozes off again.

When he wakes, there’s a routine. A few minutes of nausea first — the vomiting comes whether he’s eaten or not. Then he clears, and for fifteen or twenty minutes he’s alert and wants to talk. These windows are the best part of my day. His financial advisor, Kassie, came today, and he perked up. He likes an audience. He always has.

The strange thing is how sentimental he’s become. My father is not known for sentimentality. He is known for work, for projects, for solving problems with his hands. But something in the morphine or the dying has unlocked a tenderness I don’t think he’d have shown otherwise. He tells me to hold his hands some days. He talks about the past. I talk about Mom.

Tonight he said, “Go get your Mom” — then caught himself — “my mom, I mean Wei.” He does things like this. Small confusions that are also, somehow, sweet. He knows the difference between his dreams and what’s happening, and he’s careful to tell us which is which. He calls the dream place his fantasy land. He’ll say, “Now this is from my fantasy land,” and then describe some scene — me playing basketball, or a conversation with someone who hasn’t visited. One time he woke up and asked me if he gave me good high school experiences. I told him of course he did. Another time he said he had a song list for me, songs I could play. That one surprised me. He doesn’t listen to much music. He still whistles the same few lines to April and Aaron that he whistled to me thirty-five years ago.

I feel like the best of his personality is coming out. He seems like a sweet, charming old man — twenty years older than he really is, but more himself than ever. He told me what a good life I gave him. I told him what a good life he gave me. He says it is a good death, to be home with his family, to have us taking care of him. I believe he means it.

The roles have reversed and we both know it. He sat at the side of my bed when I was sick as a little boy. He told me it was going to be okay. Now I sit at the side of his hospice bed, and I don’t tell him that. Instead, he tells me how it is. He wants to make it until March 22nd — all of his brothers and sisters are coming for an early Easter and birthday. He has a date he’s aiming for, which is the most Dad thing I can imagine. A project with a deadline.

I get to spend a lot of time with April and Aaron through this. They’re such good kids. I tell them stories about Dad when he was younger — how strong he was, how much he built, the summers when he’d whistle out in the yard and want my help with whatever project he had going. I have a lot of stories. He did have a long and full life. The middle part was the best, when he was married to Mom. I will always remember it that way, and I think he does too.

What I feel bad about is that April and Aaron might not remember much else. Their strongest memories may be of him like this — the hospice bed in their house, the oxygen machine, the pump. I’m trying to give them other pictures to hold onto. But maybe that’s not the worst thing. Maybe watching your father be gentle and grateful and unguarded at the end is its own kind of inheritance.

I will still always see him the other way too — the big muscles, the beard, the hat and glasses, lifting me up onto the tractor to ride along while he planted corn. The summer days when everything seemed perfect and happy. I would love to go back to those days and help him with his yard projects. I wouldn’t resist this time.

But I’m here for this part instead. And I think that matters just as much.